DEVELOPMENT OF CHARLES BUKOWSKI’S LITERARY OUTLOOK AND THE AMERICAN “BEAT MOVEMENT”

Abstract

Charles Bukowski’s literary career and life was full of contrasts. Bukowski was a great humanist, a marginal, master of word whose works are full of jargonisms and non-censored expressions. Charles Bukowskis’s principal hero is life itself. His novels and stories were written during the period of “the beat movement”, and they can be truly considered part of this movement. The paper studies the common features and also the specific differences between Charles Bukowski’s works and “the beat movement writers” works in particular those of J. Kerouak who is considered to be the ideological founder of this movement. This comparative analysis is of vital importance as aesthetic principles and outlook of beatniks had a great impact on the formation of Bukowski’s literary attitude. Opposing moral and spiritual values of the American society forms the common ground on which Bukowski’s and beat writers’ ideological standpoint developed.